Try to define the word “run.” It sounds simple—until you try to pin it down. Does it mean “move your feet quickly”? Does it mean “dripping paint”? Does it mean “turn on the air conditioner”? The word “run” can mean hundreds of different things. The right meaning depends on context. The word “run” is a text. A text can be a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or a long piece of literature. The words and background that surround a text are its context. We can’t truly understand a text without knowing its context.
The Bible is a text, the very Word of God, written through human authors, without any errors or inaccuracies. To understand the Bible correctly, we must understand the context of the Bible and the many parts of the Bible. Understanding the Bible’s context is sometimes called “contextual analysis,” or analyzing the context of the Bible. We can do contextual analysis by looking at three levels of the Bible’s context.
The Context of the Words and Books of the Bible
The first level of context is the context of the Bible itself or the “literary context.” This is the most important level of context. The words in the Bible frame the context of the other words in the Bible. Some of this context is “close by” and some is “further away.”
For example, the “close by” literary context of John 3:16 is Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. John 3 sits within the first half of the book of John (sometimes called “The Book of Signs”), and then the whole book of John. Moving “further away,” the book of John is one of four books in the Bible called a “gospel” or a biography of Jesus. The gospels are a part of the New Testament. Finally, the whole Bible is the context for John 3:16. The whole Bible is called the “canon.” The word “canon” means “standard” or “measuring line,” because all of the sixty-six books of the Bible “measure up” to the high standard of God’s Word.
We want to understand the canon of the Bible accurately in its literary context. A helpful book about learning to study the Bible, Grasping God’s Word, says, “When we disregard literary context, we run the risk of forcing the Bible to say what we want it to say.”1 We must be careful to understand what the Bible actually says because we don’t want to misunderstand God’s Word.
The Context of the Cultural Background of the Bible
The second level of context involves the cultural background of the Bible or the “cultural context.” Every human author of the Bible lived in a specific time and place—a culture. Each author wrote in a certain language with writing styles that would have made sense in that culture. This context shaped the writing of each book of the Bible.
Think about the last time you wrote something like a letter or an email. You probably opened with a greeting. “Dear Julie,” or “Hey Barbara!” You chose certain words, likely in English, to express your meaning. As someone who lives in the 21st century, in the places where you have lived, you communicated in a way that makes sense in your culture. Biblical authors did the same thing.
Grasping God’s Word says, “We study the historical-cultural background of the Bible because God chose to speak first to ancient peoples living in cultures that are radically different from our own.”2 The authors of the Bible lived and wrote in very different times and places than we do. God chose them to communicate His Word through their own writing styles in their own cultures. We learn about their cultural context so that we can understand what God said through them.
The Context of the Historical Understanding of the Church
The third level of context is the context of the historical understanding and interpretation of the church. This is called the “interpretive context.” For thousands of years, God’s people have been studying, teaching, and learning what God’s Word means and why it matters. We can learn a lot from those who have studied and taught the Bible before us. Now, some people think that the church’s understanding of the Bible is as important or perfect as the Bible itself. That isn’t true. God’s people only taught perfectly when God inspired them to write and speak His Word as recorded in the Bible. Other than the Bible itself, human teachers can and do make mistakes. That said, we can still learn from them, just as kids can learn from a mom who isn’t perfect. Many faithful teachers can teach us about the Bible through books, commentaries, and other resources.
Conclusion
Contextual analysis studies the three levels of the context of the Bible: understanding the context of the words and books of the Bible (the literary context), the cultural background of the Bible (the cultural context), and the church’s historical understanding of the Bible (the interpretive context). Practicing contextual analysis and putting it into practice helps us understand the Bible accurately, and thus to know God more deeply.
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This article is excerpted from How to Study the Bible, a 6-week course designed to share practical Bible study skills to help you grow in your understanding and application of God’s Word. Download a free sample of this resource here.
1. J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 161.
2. Ibid., 135.